5 Ways To Stay Awake Without Coffee, Why You Shouldn't Mix Carbs and Fats, How To Build Extreme Speed & Much More!

In today's monster episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, how to build extreme speed. Why sugar causes heart disease. 5 Ways to Stay awake without coffee Is high potassium, Bad stomach problems during long runs. What are the best blood sugar controllers? How to gain body fat in a healthy way. What is the best kind of Electrotherapy? And is DNA testing worth it?

Welcome to the Ben Greenfield Fitness.com podcast. We provide you with free exercise, nutrition, weight loss, triathlon, and wellness advice from the top fitness fitness experts in the nation. So whether you're an Ironman triathlete or you're just trying to shed a few pounds, get ready for non run of the mill, cutting edge content from BenGreenfieldFitness.com. So how you doing today?

You see?

Yeah, I'm doing pretty good. I'm. Yeah, Just getting ready to podcast with my good friend.

Oh, that sounds.

That sounds good. Yeah. Forget about it. Eh? Forget about it. We decided we would annoy the listeners the whole time today by talking with New Jersey accents.

The most annoying accents we could think of.

Well, yeah, not only the most annoying, but also really the least trustworthy when it comes to dishing out health and fitness information. This is probably.

Hey, what are you talking about? You should listen to me. Listen to me.

Okay. I know what I'm saying. That you would not want to listen to when it comes to your health.

I don't know what you're talking about.

Trust me, I know what I'm talking about. I read a lot. I read the magazines at the 701.

For sure. Yeah, for sure.

How you doing? Is that enough?

Are we done?

I think. I think that's good.

And for all the people out there listening, that's actually how this conversation started this morning.

Yeah. For all of our new listeners, we are actually not from New Jersey or the Bronx or whatever the heck that was.

Whatever the heck that was.

Although I am heading to Thailand tomorrow if that counts for anything.

They don't sound like that at all.

No, no.

They have quite delightful accents, actually. I really like the way they. When they're speaking English.

Yeah. And I'm. This should be an interesting episode. I'm. I'm child watching my own children, of course, and podcasting simultaneously because mom's off running errands to get things ready for. For Thailand, and so the whole family.

Is going to Thailand. This is. This is a new. Have they. The kids haven't been, have they?

Yeah, they've been before. Oh, they have. Okay.

I knew Jessa had been there before. I didn't know if the kids had.

Gone anyways though, if you hear like fire crackling and stuff crashing in the background is because my kids are going.

Nuts, burning the house down.

You know, I just give them a pack of cigarettes and a stack of DVDs and let them do their thing while I podcast. And fingers crossed, everything turns out okay. So. So yeah. What do you think, man? You ready to do this?

Yes, please. News flashes BenGreenfieldFitness.com 263 is where all the show notes are. And those show notes will the links to these next upcoming cool ass news flashes.

Did you say cool ass news flashes?

I don't think I did.

It's a very descriptive adjective. Yeah, a lot of good articles. It's been a while since we've done a traditional podcast. We've had a lot of special interviews and man, do I ever have some cool interviews coming out for our listeners while I'm gone gallivanting about Asia. But I do want to bring you three interesting tidbits from the health and fitness front that came across my radar this week.

Bring it on.

And the first was an article in the Huffington Post called Secrets of the Extremely Fit. Did you see this one?

Yeah, I saw that.

Yeah. Yeah, there's a couple of.

Those are awesome.

Written by a certified strength and conditioning coach from Men's Health magazine. And it went over 10 recommendations from kind of like extremely fit people across the globe. And this one was kind of near and dear to my heart because one of my goals over, over the next five years is to become one of the fittest guys on the face of the planet. Like, I want to take all the fitness I've built up for Ironman Triathlon and I've signed up for a Seal Fit course next year. I'm doing a bunch of spartan races. I'm launching into CrossFit. I'm attempting to turn myself into an absolute beast. And of course, that's all initiating with the mass game protocol that you may have heard about in the Dan John podcast last week. And I'm actually off to the gym later on today to do my. My set of 50 squats and the barbell complexes and all the stuff that leaves my legs shaking like jello for days on end.

I'm on my day off. I do mine tomorrow. That's right, my second workout. I didn't get to joining me. I didn't get too destroyed from the first workout, but I know it was sort of an introductory one. So I think this next one's going.

To be first workout's pretty introductory and by the time you get about four workouts in, it's, it's nuts.

So yeah, so next week I won't be able to walk, but so far I'm just funny.

And for those of you who have no clue what we're talking about, just go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and listen to the interview I did with Dan John. Or just go read the show notes. And it's the exact mass gain program that Brock and I are doing for the next few weeks. Although I'll be on a little bit of a hiatus while I'm off in Thailand.

It'd be hard to do it while you're doing your triathlon camp, but there's.

Not a lot of barbells and chalk at the resorts in Thailand.

We've completely strayed from the news flash back to the secrets of the extremely fit.

So here are the top the first one is to rethink your nutrient intake and it emphasizes specifically going after nutrient density, staying away from refined carbs and adding in more proteins and fats, which was kind of like a no duh. It was, you know, basically like a snub. The White House's brand new unveiled plate shaped pie chart and do your own higher protein, higher fat intake deal instead. So no surprise there. Load up on green energy. This is a good one. I tend to see this not emphasized enough and kind of like the bro science, bodybuilding, mass gain become extremely fit kind of industry. So love the idea of eating more phytonutrients and kind of doing that.

Oh, okay. So it has nothing to do with the green lantern ring or anything like that?

No green energy or green absinthe or anything like that? No, just like dinosaur kale and spinach and bok choy and all the stuff you may not associate with piling on muscle, but that is incredibly important for body alkalinity and recovery. So I agree with that one. The next one is get more vitamin D. A little bit disappointed in that one. It said 600 international units a day of vitamin D, not only 6,000. Well, no, not really. So you know too far. Vitamin D toxicity can be an issue and we talked about this in a podcast I believe, where not only do you need to get more than 600 international units a day if you're trying to put on muscle or increase your steroidal precursors, and you should generally be closer to about 2,000 international units a day for most folks. But these recommendations to take vitamin D unopposed without mentioning the two components that that you have to have in your body in order for vitamin D to work synergistically and naturally, which would be vitamin K2 and vitamin A. If you're not getting vitamin a and vitamin K2 along with vitamin D, you're going to kind of screw yourself from an arterial calcification standpoint. So not only do I think that folks should be getting more vitamin D than what they recommend in this article, but they should be balancing it out with A and K for sure.

Isn't there a bit of a, like, you need to have some cholesterol present as well?

You know, you need cholesterol circulating in your bloodstream in adequate amounts for the sunlight to convert.

Okay, so that's not when you're taking vitamin D supplement.

Exactly. So that would be a deal. Like if you're out sun soaking to get adequate levels of vitamin D and on a low fat diet, you're not going to make vitamin D. You have to have adequate cholesterol. The next recommendation was to spread out your protein, which I thought was a good recommendation. What that means is that research has shown that if you're trying to become extremely fit or optimize muscle repair, if you divide your daily protein up into multiple portions throughout the day, rather than having like one big bolus of protein, say like with breakfast or something, you're going to recover better. So that's a good idea. And get a little bit of protein with every meal rather than just like one big bolus of protein. The next one was. I like the word bolus. Bolus. I'm gonna name my next child Bolus if I have another kid Bolus.

Greenville.

Boy or girl?

That sounds good, actually.

Yeah, Boy or girl? Either one would work. Find you'd whey. And this one recommends that you use whey protein during the day and then at night use whey protein plus casein, which burns more slowly, to provide kind of a steady stream of protein. I'm an okay fan of that recommendation, but I think that a lot of folks who are trying to either put on muscle or recover faster or get extremely fit, they go with a bunch of whey protein and they screw themselves because they have an autoimmune reaction to whey. A lot of folks do much, much better in terms of not feeling like they're crapping through a straw and getting bloating and gas and all the nasty stuff that goes along with whey, sometimes doing like a vegan protein like pea, rice, hemp, that kind of thing. So just keep your options open. If whey doesn't agree with you in your stomach, it's okay to do vegan based protein sources. So all right. The next one was to work your entire body every time you go into the gym. Great recommendation. I highly, highly agree with that. It was how I put on a bunch of size. Back when I was a bodybuilder. I stayed away from single joint exercises. Stayed away from the approach of doing like arms on one day, you know, legs on another day, back on another day. And the way I've always approached things is when you go into the gym, you walk out of there having worked your entire body. That's a great recommendation, especially for the hormonal release, for either fat loss or muscle gain or both. The next recommendation is to lift weird things. Like that's my favorite one. So really like sandbags, kettlebells, fat grip barbells, odd shaped training tools. You know, I've got like one of those monkey faced kettlebells from on it and I've got a battle mace and some club bells and you know, going above and beyond just like dumbbells and barbells is definitely useful. Kind of exposing your body to some new things and that can even include you maybe, you know, finding a playground in your neighborhood that you can do some weird exercises on. You know, like some hangs from the monkey bars or some dips on perhaps bars that might be thicker than what you'd see at the gym. You know, just basically kind of moving your body in weird ways and especially exposing it to loads in weird ways.

I'll leave the reasoning behind that one too. Just the fact that we don't necessarily lift things the way we do in the gym in regular life, like carrying groceries down the street, you're holding them in weird ways or you have a kid under one arm and a purse under the other and stuff. So yeah, it's good reasoning.

Probably the two most relevant examples of this would be one, when I go to Darrell Edwards primality workshops, this is the guy from the fitnessexplorer dot. He explains how he used to be able to deadlift £400, but when one of his friends was on the ground and dared Daryl to see if he could pick him up, he couldn't even pick up his friend off the ground just because he was like a weird shape and his mass was distributed unevenly. And true strength means that you could do something like, you know, grab somebody and rescue them from a fire. And then the other thing that I think is relevant for this is I'll take my kids out sometimes on walks or you know, hikes and they'll get tired sometimes. So I'll give myself a workout by picking up both my kids and just seeing how far I can carry them. You want to work out? Try. Try hauling children around and squirming 5 year olds and they love it too. So. So there you go. Let's go with the last three tips here. Master the pull up, which I think is fantastic. That's why I have a pull up bar installed in the door of my office and I they suggested that you.

Should be able to do 15 pull ups.

Yep, yep. So I grease the groove. I never do more than five pull ups at, but if I ever do decide I want to just try and jack out as many pull ups as I can, I can get to 25 easily. Strict bodyweight pull ups, and that's just by throwing in five here and there throughout the day when I walk underneath the pull up bar in my office. Pull ups are one of the best indicators of your strength. So that's really good.

And that's pull ups, not chin ups.

Correct, Correct.

Overhand, not underhand.

And you know, underhand is not bad either, but either way you gotta be able to pull your body around. Number nine is to move more weight. And what they're basically saying is to just basically not only put more weight on the bar, but when you put that weight on the bar. Like the couple of recommendations that they give is if you're bench pressing, you think about trying to bend the ends of the bar away from you as you press that bar up.

And so that was a good way to firing it.

More muscles in your upper back. Yep. And then for example, with squatting, they tell you to press outward against the floor with your feet. Feet don't actually move your feet, but press outward against the floor with your feet so that you feel your glutes activated, which boosts your power when you squat. Both of those are fantastic recommendations if you're trying to get stronger or you know, get more toned at the gym. And then last, they tell you to ditch crunches and sit ups and to train your core the right way by doing things like planks and push ups and elements that work your entire deep abdominal and abdominal and not just isolate the, you know, that bending and extending of the spine. So I love mountain climbers for that. Ton of details in the article. We'll link to it in the show notes. Well worth going and checking out, giving it a read, maybe digging in a little bit deeper. So that came across the radar and then also two articles on coffee and the first is called the Truth About Caffeine and Coffee. And this was over on a website called bsynchro.com we'll link to it in the show notes. I am a big fan, as you know, Brock, of coffee and all things coffee related. I love the taste of coffee. My father was a gourmet coffee roaster growing up. I like to just taste different coffees and kind of look into the science of coffee as well. So I thought this article was interesting. First of all, it mentions the fact that caffeine makes it easier to get into flow states associated with organization and creativity. And what that means is that when you need to be either more athletic or more artistic or more productive, that the psychological state induced by caffeine can enhance your ability to get into that state. And that's why starting your morning with a cup of coffee is an okay thing to do. And if you look at the Greek island, I forget the name of the island that has the highest number per capita of centenarians and old healthy people on the face of the planet. These people do indeed drink a cup of coffee and usually a few cups of tea throughout the day. They're granted not pulling into into 711 and grabbing a coffee at 7 11.

But no Dunkin Donuts.

Yeah, no Dunkin Donuts. Coffee like good rich coffee. So we've talked before on the podcast though, about how coffee specifically the way that it acts is it binds to these things called adenosine receptors throughout your brain and throughout your nervous system. Now, adenosine is a neurotransmitter and it's an inhibitory neurotransmitter. And what that means is it's suppresses the level of the activity of the neurons that it interacts with. So if we take the caffeine molecule and we block the ability of the adenosine molecule to bind to the receptor to the adenosine receptor, we keep ourselves more alert, we keep adenosine from binding. What happens though, is eventually your body creates more and more adenosine receptors. You become sensitive to coffee. And like we geeked out on a few weeks ago on the podcast, and in a more thorough explanation of this, you become resistant to the effects of caffeine. So you need more and more. And the other thing that happens is caffeine stimulates your adrenals to dump out huge amounts of epinephrine and cortisol. And both of these can in excess cause a pretty significant stress response in your body. So there are some drawbacks to caffeine not Only the fact that you need higher and higher levels of it, but it can stress out your adrenals.

Wait, did you say epinephrine?

Epinephrine, Yep.

Like the same stuff they put in like what's called an EpiPen for allergic reactions.

Exactly. So if you get stung by a bee, you could just drink a pot of coffee.

It might be just chug some coffee.

It might be more prudent to just go with the injection though, if you're allergic. So what you can do to ensure that you mitigate some of these negative effects of caffeine is number one, cycle your caffeine. And what this article recommends is don't use caffeine every day. Now, I'm not as much a fan of not using caffeine every day or say, like doing one day on, one day off, that kind of thing, as much as what I, what is my practice? I go six weeks on, two weeks off. So it takes about seven to 12 days to reset the adenosine receptors in your brain. So what you do is you simply drink coffee, regular coffee, for about six weeks, and then you drink decaf for two weeks. So I'm actually in a decaf phase right now. And you know, I just have decaf bags in the freezer and I have regular bags in the freezer and it's out and ground and in a, in a cool, dry place when it's waiting to be made into coffee, I use one of those little aeropress coffee makers and I simply use decaf for two weeks out of an eight week cycle, which I think is really prudent to do. If you're drinking coffee.

That stops you from having to go through the whole adjustment period too. When you do switch to the decaf, you don't get the headaches, you don't get the grumps and everything.

Zero withdrawal symptoms. Yep. So this is just kind of like a for life practice. The next thing that you do is you realize that the actual dose of caffeine necessary to get you into that flow state, based off of what research has shown as far as the neural enhancing properties of coffee, is fairly low. When we're looking at performance enhancement for sports, it's a little bit higher. Like performance enhancement for sports, you got to get close to like three or four cups of coffee before you really start to notice this huge performance effect and significant performance boost. But for a neural boost and a productivity boost and to kind of get into that artistic creative flow phase, you only need about 30-50mg of caffeine, and that's only about a third to a half cup of coffee. So experiment lower doses. You're making yourself a huge, you know, cup of coffee in the morning, and you're just doing it not necessarily because you like the flavor, but because you like the alertness and everything. You may want to consider drinking less because you actually don't need as much as you probably think that you do. And the article, I guess that would.

Be, that would be about the amount that would be in like a double espresso or something like one of the like they have in Europe.

It's about exactly what would be in a shot of espresso. Espresso has less caffeine than coffee. Even though it's more densely concentrated in flavor, it does have less caffeine.

So, yeah, it's more satisfying because of that delicious, dense flavor.

And then one other, there's a few other tips given in the article, but one other tip that I wanted to share with our listeners is that they do recommend some alternatives to caffeine. And one in particular that they recommend is a compound called theobronine, which stimulates blood flow to your body and stimulates blood flow to your brain. And it has a similar effect as caffeine, but without that demanding on the kidneys to churn out epinephrine or that increase in cortisol. So it's called theobromine. Now, do you know what a really good source of theobromine is, Brock? Green Tea unprocessed chocolate, also known as cacao. Even better. So I'm not talking about the dark chocolate bar that you'd get whatever at the healthy section of the grocery store. What I'm talking about are these actual cacao nibs. You can order them off Amazon. I keep a bag up in my pantry and I put it into smoothies. But just regular, unsweetened, organic cacao nibs are a really significant source of this theobromine, which gives you a similar lift as caffeine without the deleterious effect on your adrenal glands. So something to add into your pantry if you want some of that extra kick and you want to kind of pull back on coffee a little bit.

I thought you were going to say something to add into your pants.

That too, of course. How could I forget? Now, the last thing I wanted to mention was a study that came out that compared caffeine to something called L. Theanine. Now, L. Theanine, some people may be familiar with as the active component of green tea. And what this study did was it compared caffeine with L. Theanine from tea and looked at what happened in terms of the concentration and increase in neural performance, reaction time, and concentration from drinking green tea versus caffeine. Now, it was found that L. Theanine consumption actually gave better concentration and better cognitive performance compared to caffeine and coffee. That when you combine caffeine and L. Theanine, you get an even better effect. And then finally, when you drink L. Theanine for alertness, it has a similar alertness producing effect as coffee, but doesn't keep you awake at night. Meaning that if you have, say, like a cup of green tea while you're studying at night, you're still gonna be able to sleep. Whereas coffee can really interfere with your sleep because a lot of people misconstrue or think that, you know, the alertness producing compounds in tea are just a different form of caffeine, but they're not. It's really that L. Theanine that's the primary component, especially if something like green tea. So in an ideal scenario, what you would do is you would have a little bit of coffee each day, mostly caffeinated other than those couple of weeks where you're switching to decaf. But then you would switch farther and farther as you go throughout your day to as you get closer to bedtime, tea sources, preferably like a high L. Theanine containing source of tea like green tea. And you would kind of combine both of those that you're getting the ultimate in cognitive performance. The coffee in the morning, the L. Theanine throughout the day is kind of like a slow bleed as you're drinking your green tea. And then every couple of weeks, you switch to decaf coffee, but you can still continue to drink that green tea because that L. Theanine doesn't have quite the same effect on your adenosine receptors or on your adrenal glands. So now you know everything you need to know about. About biohacking your life with coffee and tea.

Yeah. Geez.

So we're actually gonna talk more about coffee later on in this podcast, but there you go. Those are this week's news flashes, Special announcements.

So I want to know why we weren't nominated for a podcast award.

Because we're too freaking strange.

I thought you're gonna say we're too good.

You know what? I don't know. But. But we do want to mention to the listeners that my other podcast, the Get Fit Guy podcast, which sadly doesn't include Brock, has been. Oh, wait a second, wait A minute.

I'm the X Factor.

Wait a minute. So the Get Fit Guy podcast was nominated over at Podcast Awards. If you're listening to this podcast when it first comes out, if you vote by November 15, which is like 48 hours from now, then I will be forever indebted to you. And you can do that over@podcastawards.com. you go over there, you vote for the Get Fit Guy. It's in the health and fitness category and you can submit your vote multiple times. You can actually within a 24 hour period. I don't think you can just sit there all day and vote.

No, I think it's once a day.

Because then I would hire somebody to just sit around and vote all day long.

And so if you win, what do you get? Like a pair of rubber boots and a kick in the pants?

No, if you win, what you get is a letter of lawsuit from the patent troll who's patented the podcasting technology. This actually happened to everybody who won the podcast awards last year.

Oh, good.

There's a guy out there who claims that he owns the technology of podcasting and he's trying to sue everybody who podcasts, and he's actually successfully been able to to claim the right to the podcasting technology. So if you're just like an itty bitty podcaster like us, then, you know, they don't care that much. But once you get up to like the whatever, like the Adam Carolla level, where when you read a commercial on error, you're getting paid $4,000 a pop and you know, just like crazy stuff like that, he's going to see that money and go after your ass. So anyways, though, that's what you get when you win the podcast.

That's what you get. Oh, that's nice.

So go vote for us so we can get our patent lawsuit over@podcastawards.com what else? The Creative Live presentation that I will be giving down in San Francisco along with my lovely wife Jessa is happening December 11th through 14th. That's a totally free online course called Achieve Ultimate Human Performance.

Not only Ultimate Human Performance, it's just so doesn't hold anything back.

That's right. And you can attend live in San Francisco if you'd like. And if you want to apply to be a member of our live audience. Actually, technically, you don't have to live in San Francisco. If you want to fly in from anywhere across the globe, you could be a member of the live audience. But if you want to be a member of the live audience, We've got a form that you can fill out over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com 263 and so, yeah, go check it out.

Everybody will be happy to know the links are now fixed and working correctly. We had a bit of a. I don't know if anybody listening here got our rash of emails and tweets and stuff that happened over the last couple weeks, but we had some problems with some links in the last little while and we apologize for that, but I think everything's solved again.

Yeah, we like to break the Internet. The last thing is that I have introduced a brand new coaching package for me. I'm pretty busy and I don't have a ton of time to take on new clients for coaching and fitness and nutrition and health. So what I've done is put together a new package called the Black Box Package. And what it is is it's a package that arrives to your doorstep chock full of everything that I recommend to reboot your body and enhance your health. So it's got a gut fix package, it's got a hormonal balancing package. It's got everything you need for gut testing, blood testing, saliva testing, and then it also comes with a one hour consult with me, as well as some extra goodies thrown in, like the, the crystal that I wear around my wrist for electromagnetic radiation blocking. It's got a couple of books from me, essentially, like everything that you would need to kind of like start hardcore into reinventing your entire body. And it's called the Black Box Package. It's spendy. Like, it's not for everybody. Like, ultimately, once you've, you've purchased it, it's about $3,000 for everything, but it will be anything that you would need if you're kind of one of those independent people who maybe doesn't want to coach but just wants everything done for you all at once. It's called the Black Box Package. So we'll put a link to that in the show notes as well.

When you think about prorating that over the year, it's not so bad. Like, if you're paying like 300 bucks a month for a coach, well, that's 10 months.

And we have the option for people to spread that out over 12 months if they want. So there you go. And that being said, we've got one special announcement. Oh, we should also mention that this podcast is brought to you by Audible Podcast. Audible Podcast, yes. So if you're in the US Or Canada, you can get a free audiobook. We are going to make an audiobook recommendation at the end of this podcast. So stay tuned for guest appearance, special guest appearance, and an audible podcast recommendation. So here's a special message and then we'll jump into this week's Q and A. Did you know that Ben Greenfield personally mentors trainers, coaches, physicians and nutritionists from around the globe? From business building tips to advanced human performance and health concepts. It's all part of a private mastermind called the Superhuman Coach Network. When you join, you get instant access to monthly workshops with Ben, a Q and a forum, over 40 hours of cutting edge audio and video education, and much more. Check it out today and become one of the world's leading health and fitness experts@superhumancoach.com podcast. That's superhumancoach.com podcast.

Listener Q and A. Hi Ben and.

Brock, it's Alex from Alberta. I'm calling because I'm currently in the military hoping to become a police officer. Both these professions require you go from a resting state to 100% effectiveness very quickly without a warm up. Are there any exercise recommendations you'd make to improve this performance and help reduce any injuries? Thanks a lot.

I appreciate Alex's.

Find your words, find your words. All right, there you go. No clue what you were gonna say. Anyways. Yeah. As far as increasing speed to be able to go from 0 to 100 in a split second without hurting yourself or without hurting yourself. Yeah. You know, a lot of people go and lift weights and run around the track and stuff for speed, but speed is kind of a different animal. We haven't talked about it too much on the show, but technically speed is just your ability to travel a set distance over as short a period of time as possible. So whereas power would be your ability to kind of like move a. Move a certain weight over a set distance over a short amount of time, speed is your ability to actually travel over that distance. And it's totally force independent. So if you want to do something fast, then technically you have speed. So it could be like playing a game of spoons and being able to like grab that spoon as quickly as possible off the table. I mean, that's technically speed, whereas power would be, you know, doing that with a 60 pound, whatever wrist weight on your hand or something like that. So anyways, though, so training for increasing speed, I do have a few little things that I like to include in the protocol. People who need to be able to travel a set distance over a short a period of time as possible. One thing that you need to bear in mind though, is that There are a few rules that are kind of crucial rules for speed training. I've written a fairly comprehensive article about building speed and I'm going to link to that article for you in the show notes. But I also will give you kind of the bird's eye overview here. Number one is that when you're trying to build speed, you need to make sure that you do it fresh. So the time to do a speed workout is not after a weight training workout or after an endurance based workout. You want to do speed when you're very fresh. And the reason for that is that your neuromuscular system, which is the system that's most responsible for speed development, is extremely fatigue prone. So it can't have been exhausted prior to you doing a speed workout or else it's just going to be junk training. And a lot of coaches make this mistake. A lot of sport coaches make this mistake. They'll save a speed training session for after football practice or basketball or soccer practice, or they'll save conditioning for after the tennis practice, when in reality that stuff needs to be done fresh, either in the morning before practice. Ideally your peak reaction time is going to be between 2 and 4pm in the afternoon. So you could also do something in the afternoon or the early evening, ideally for your speed. And I'll give you some ideas for workouts here in a second. The next thing you need to understand is that when you're doing a speed workout, you have to go into it with the mindset that speed is very, very low volume and it's high work capacity, but very low volume. And what I mean by that is that you don't want to feel like you're doing metabolic conditioning, like you have a high heart rate or you're sucking wind. Like everything about speed is super short, super quick. It's nothing where you're breathing hard or you feel like you're burning lots of calories or anything like that. The last thing you should know about speed is that you're trying to challenge your nerves. So if your brain isn't being forced to fire really, really quickly and send messages very, very quickly to your muscles, you're not going to develop speed. That's why when I recommend doing something like a overspeed session on a bicycle, and they tell you to do like high cadence repeats on a bicycle, if you're going to develop like explosive speed out of the saddle while riding a bike, you would want to be pedaling at a rate of 120, 130, 140 revolutions per minute, which actually makes your brain tired if you try to do that. Like your brain is just thinking the whole time, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go.

It's not so much your muscles. Yeah, your muscles aren't failing. It's more like you start to sort of spaz out.

So you.

Your feet going that fast.

Whereas with weight training or power training, you're trying to recruit as many different motor units as possible in a muscle with speed, you're just trying to grab those motor units as quickly as you can. So some of the things that can really help with speed. One thing that I'm a huge fan of for a workout is stairs. And taking stairs one at a time as fast as you can, that really, really helps with cadence and it helps with turnover. And you can also take advantage of the down stairs as well as the upstairs. So you can go and do stadium stairs, take the steps one at a time as quickly as possible. And you don't have to climb. If it's a big stadium, you don't want to climb until you're tired. You don't want to climb to the point where your cadence is starting to slow down. We're talking about climbing just like 20 steps at a time. Okay. So you would start up the stadium stairs, you'd climb up 20 steps, step by step, as fast as you can at as high a cadence as possible. And then you can just kind of walk kind of slowly to the top of the stairs, and then you turn around and you go down all the stairs as fast as you can, again focusing on cadence and speed and turnover. So stairs work really well for speed. Another thing that works really well for speed is aqua jogging in a deep pool where you can't touch the bottom and just doing 10 to 22nd, very high cadence turnover in the pool. The nice thing about those are they're low impact. And so you could do something like that almost every day if you wanted to. And this is something that like you swimmers or triathletes can throw in at the beginning of a workout, is you can just hop in and do a few really, really high cadence efforts in the pool to warm yourself up. If you need to work on speed, you need to work on turnover. So high cadence, deep water, I'm a huge fan of that as well. For both runners and cyclists, those high, high cadence cycling repeats that I just talked about, where you're doing very short, like 10 to 22nd, 120, 130, 140 RPM efforts, those work really well. Also the Other thing that I found to work pretty well for speed, especially in terms of enhancing your neuromuscular your ability to grab those motor units very, very quickly would be super high. Repetitive contractions using Electrostimulation I think we have a question about electrostimulation later on in this podcast. But what you do is you use an electrostim unit like a Compex electrostim unit and you put it into power mode or I think they have a speed mode on it. I don't have my compex here on my desk or else I'd check anyways though, what you do is you actually attach electrodes to the muscle and the electrostimulation unit rather than your brain, causes those muscles to fire. So you're kind of working a different system, but you're still training your muscles how to fire repeatedly. So you wouldn't want to do just that for speed training because you do want to solidify that brain muscle connection as well. But electrostim can work out pretty well for speed training. A few other things that I should make sure to mention when you're training for speed is make sure you take care of yourself from a nutritional standpoint as well. So for building speed, you're definitely going to want adequate choline in your diet. Choline is a fat that is specifically responsible for increasing muscle contractability and also the ability of neural circuits to learn new complex activities like moving a muscle or moving your legs to a higher and higher turnover during something like a hundred meter sprint. So choline, you can get that from things like walnuts, fish eggs. Make sure you eat the eggs with the yolk. Healthy fatty sources like that are really good sources of choline. So make sure you're including those type of things in your. Another thing that's really important as far as a naturally occurring amino acid that helps protect neurons from free radical oxidation and will help to enhance your neural strength is L tyrosine. It's called L tyrosine. Now L tyrosine is something that you could just supplement with about 30 minutes or so prior to a speed based workout. You would need about a gram or so of L tyrosine and you can just get like L tyrosine powder, like a now foods L tyrosine powder. The next thing is green tea, which we already talked about. Green tea not only has that L theanine that I talked about, but it also has epigallocatechin in it or what's known as EGCG and some different forms of what are called epicatechins and all of these have been shown to be very potent for elevating your brain and your neuronal activity. So kind of like keeping green tea coming in during the days that you're doing your speed training, that can be really helpful as well. And then the last thing is to just make sure you're getting adequate vitamin B. Most people that are eating a healthy diet are getting adequate vitamin B, but vitamin B is really important for proper brain function, specifically like folic acid. And vitamin B12 helps to maintain the myelin sheath that insulates your nerve fibers. So that allows like nerve impulses to travel more quickly down the nerve. Again, most people who are like, if you're using a good vitamin B supplement or you're eating a really well rounded, nutrient dense diet, you're probably getting enough vitamin B. But if you're say you're vegan or you're vegetarian, sometimes there can be some vitamin B12 deficiencies there. And if you're trying to train for speed simultaneously, it's something to think about. So those are some of my biggies. And then finally, the last thing is you're going to be better at speed on any days where your sympathetic nervous system is really, really strong. So I recommend that you test your heart rate variability in the morning. And you can use the Sweet Beat phone app for that. There's another one called the Omegawave. There's the Bioforce. I mean, there's a ton of different heart rate variability testing apps out there and most of them will kind of like give you a green light if it's okay to go anaerobic that day. And what that means is that your sympathetic nervous system is really strong and well toned that day and ready for a really, really good fight or flight type of workout. So I wouldn't be doing much speed workout or power workout or strength workout on days where your sympathetic nervous system is weak because that's a really fast path to injury and illness. So I definitely would incorporate some heart rate variability testing as well. If you want to know which days are going to be the best days to do speed workouts. And then, okay, last thing I promise, you don't have to do speed workouts every day. About every 72 hours or so is sufficient. And if you're doing speed workouts a lot more frequently than that, your nervous system is not going to have recovered adequately. So, you know, two times a week is just fine. And you can use heart rate variability tracking to decide which two days of the week are going to be best for you to do that.

What about something like a cognitive test or one of those games? Like there's that system online called Lumosity. Would you suggest something like that just to be able to get the reaction time, like hand eye coordination, but also just sort of cognitive reaction time?

Oh, sure. There's a lot of different games out there that you can use to kind of supercharge your brain. So for the purpose of speed, something like Luminosity would not necessarily be the answer per se. You know, there's, there's a program called Mind Wave that trains your brain to become more focused and more relaxed and more alert. There are things like the binaural beats that come along with that superhuman bracelet that I wear that you can get, that you just put into an MP3 player and those help you with meditation and focus and creativity. Luminosity is like brain games to help with problem solving and attention and memory. But for the purposes of speed, I would say probably the best app for you to get would be a tap test app. And there's a test called the CNS Tap Test phone app. I'll put a link to it in the show notes. It's just a very simple app that you would use. This one I think is for an iPhone. I don't know if they make one for an Android platform. But you just tap the phone as many times as you can within, I believe it's a 22nd time frame. And you keep track of how quick you're tapping. And this is a really, really good reflection of your central nervous system strength. You'll notice right off the bat, no duh, that you can't get as many taps after you've been drinking the night before or something like that. But there are times when you just can't tap enough. And it's not, it's not related to you being hungover. It can just mean that your nervous system isn't well recovered. So the CNS Tap test is a really cool little test that you can use to, to kind of quantitatively track the strength of your nervous system. This is Archie crawling and Ben. I heard you mention that if you're going to be on a high fat diet to definitely stay away from sugars. But I'm just kind of wondering, did I need to stay away from sugars while I'm consuming the high fat? Is there a window where I can consume sugars? And I'm referring to maybe like an apple, a banana or something in a smoothie or what's the combination? If I had maybe some butter in my oatmeal is that super bad for my cardiovascular heart health? So maybe you could add a little bit more light on this because I'm a little bit confused. If you could help me out, I would appreciate it. Great podcast. Thanks. So I think I've said this many, many times before on the podcast that you should not eat a lot of starches and processed sugars if you're going to be eating, like a high, healthy fat intake.

I think you really hammered that home during the interview with Durian Ryder.

Yep. And I'll tell you exactly why now. And this is. I don't think my response to this question is going to be super long. It's a little bit sciency, but it's pretty simple if you want to get down to the brass tacks of things. So here's the overview.

There's a dog eating your children in the background.

I hear the dog barking right now. Yeah. That might mean that Jess is home, which would be a good thing. We're actually doing an inner circle podcast here in like two hours, so. All right. In which we're going to go around and show all the healthy items that we pack when we're traveling. So hopefully she gets home in time to hide the Skittles and everything. Okay, so here's the deal with blood sugar and why blood sugar is one of the biggest issues when it comes to cholesterol being atherogenic and cholesterol actually being an issue. So what elevated levels of blood sugar do is they create this ideal condition for something called a glycation reaction to occur. Now, you may have heard before about advanced glycation end products, or fittingly called ages. Yes. And that's the process. Glycation is the process where a protein or a fat, also known as a lipid, is bound or joined together with a sugar. Now, the result when you get a protein or fat bound to a sugar is a very reactive molecule that's capable of damaging pretty much any tissue in your body that it comes into contact with. And glycation of cholesterol particles, specifically of LDL cholesterol particles, is a very well documented phenomenon. And what it does is it really increases the atherogenic or the heart damaging or artery damaging potential of ldl. This is because when an LDL particle, an LDL cholesterol particle, has been glycated by sugar in the bloodstream, it's extremely more susceptible to what's called oxidation. Now, when an LDL particle becomes oxidized, that becomes a huge risk factor for heart disease. And you can actually Test the level of oxidized LDL or the size of the actual LDL particle. So rather than just getting like a full on LDL test, you can for example, test vldl. You can test something called APO B, you can test something called lp. There's a lot of different kind of blood lipid measurements out there that you can get to test this or you can just play it safe and follow the, follow the rules. Because what happens is glycated LDL causes oxidative stress, which causes inflammation in the smooth muscle cells that line your arterial walls. And that causes plaque buildup. So you actually can't really get much plaque buildup if you don't have sugar that's actually attached to those LDL particles. Now there are a few other issues with glycated LDL particles. Number one, they cause degradation of what's called endothelial nitric oxide synthase. And many of us are familiar with nitric oxide as being the molecule that causes vasodilation and blood flow. So we get down regulation of that. So the arteries aren't able to stay as big and as wide. And the other issue is that a glycated LDL particle actually can't be recognized by the LDL receptor on the cell surface. So these oxidized glycated LDL particles just float around in the bloodstream. And as they're floating around in the bloodstream, one of the places that they wind up is, is creating plaque on the arterial cell wall.

So they're not able to be used for what they normally would be used for. Like repairing cells and giving some energy and stuff.

Exactly. So this is why I've always said if you're gonna be eating fats and you're gonna go after like getting adequate cholesterol in your diet, which is a great idea. It's good for brain function, steroids, hormones, everything. You gotta be careful with the concentration of sugars in your blood. Now let's get down to brass tacks and I'll tell you exactly what you need to do and what you need to look for. Because I understand what Archie is kind of wondering if you just avoid sugar altogether if you got to time it. So all you need is a blood glucose monitor. 15$20 blood glucose monitor from the pharmacy Walgreens.

You can actually get one for your iPhone now too.

You can get one for your iPhone. So wherever. So here is what you want to look for. You don't want your postprandial blood glucose to be rising above 125 postprandial being after eating. So after you've eaten, if your blood glucose within that hour after you've eaten is rising above 125, you need to be choosing foods or eating meals that have a lower glycemic index or a lower amount of starches and sugars in them. Okay? So that's number one. And that would especially hold true if that meal contains fat. So if a meal contains fat, you eat that meal that contains fat, and your blood glucose goes above 125. That's a risk factor for glycation of the cholesterol. Now, the other thing that you need to make sure of is if you wake up in the morning and you take your fasted blood glucose levels, so not having had any coffee, because coffee can cause your liver to churn out a bunch of glucose, just, you know, water maybe. And that's it, you're looking for a fasted glucose level of 70 to 85. Okay, a lot of people settle for a 90, a 95, 100, whatever. But what you're looking for is 70 to 85. If you really, truly are concerned about glycation of cholesterol. So if you can avoid any time getting a postprandial glucose reading of anything greater than 125, and you can keep your fasting blood glucose levels at 70 to 85, you'll be in the clear. You'll be fine. So that's your testing.

As soon as you wake up, before you've had any coffee, before you had any water, and then you have, say, breakfast, and then you wait like what, an hour before you test?

Yep. And you wait for the fasted glucose. You wait an hour. Oh, you're talking about the post, the postprandial. Usually about the 30 to 60 minute window after you eat. You don't have to time it exactly, but right around there.

So then if you do that after every meal, you're just trying to keep it in those windows. Keep an archive or a diary or something of what you ate. Figure out, okay, I need to cut out, maybe I should only have half a banana for my breakfast instead of a whole one. Or something along those lines.

Exactly. And we'll talk, I think, a little bit later on about specific supplements you could take before a meal that will help to shove blood sugar levels lower in response to a meal. So I think we do have a question about glycos all over something coming up later on. So I'll address that later as far as, like, ways you can kind of hack the blood glucose response. But Yeah, I hope that kind of gives you what you're looking for, Archie, as far as kind of quantifying this. Hi, Ben and Brack. This is Becca from Milwaukee. I've noticed that you guys discuss sleep a great deal, but mostly in terms of how to sleep better or without falling asleep. My question is different in the sense that I want some advice on how to stay awake. I'm a 22 year old endurance athlete and personal trainer with a very active lifestyle. However, when I am in situations where I need to sit still and pay attention to something, such as listening to a professor, watching a movie, reading, sitting in church, or even driving, I struggle to stay awake. No matter how hard I try to fight it, my eyes just won't seem to stay open. Even though throughout the rest of the the day, when I'm up and moving, I'm not fatigued. I aim to get at least seven hours of sleep a night. But this happens no matter how much sleep I get or how early I wake up. I sleep like a rock at night. I fall asleep the moment my head hits the pillow, and I very rarely wake up once throughout the night. I really don't like the taste of coffee, and the ingredients and energy drinks make me nervous. So I was wondering if there's anything you would recommend in terms of supplements or natural things to add to my diet so I don't have to constantly punch my leg in class to stay.

Awake while in church. Isn't that the fear of going to hell enough?

That's right. All right, so we've talked about coffee a little bit already, and I think we're gonna end up talking about it a little bit more. There are a lot of different reasons that you can struggle to stay awake during the day. Sometimes it can be adrenal fatigue related. Sometimes it can just be the fact that you are working hard, and then when you sit down, you stop working hard. Your body just naturally kind of wants to rest a little bit. Sometimes it can be because you have some autoimmune or some allergic type of reactions to foods that you're eating. I mean, there are a lot of different reasons that you, you would have issues with alertness. So without knowing a lot about.

I have an allergy to really boring professors.

Me too. Must be a common allergy. So without knowing Becca's history, like what kind of like her typical diet is, if she's avoiding like wheat, soy, dairy, if she's had issues in the past with adrenal fatigue, that kind of stuff, I can definitely make a sweeping recommendation that if she doesn't like coffee and she avoids energy drinks, that there are other things that you can use to maintain alertness. So what I want to give Becca and my angle on this question would be five different ways that you can stay awake or you can increase alertness without using coffee. If you're not a coffee drinker or you want to stay away from coffee. Fair enough.

Bring it on.

Okay, cool. So the first thing that I'm going to recommend is to use cold showers. And I will take a cold shower as many as five times during the day. If I'm having a day where I'm working really hard, maybe I haven't slept my usual seven to eight hours the night before and I just need to stay alert and awake. I have yet to step out of a podcast to take a cold shower, but I've been tempted for sure. I'm totally not kidding you. I just want to respect Brock's time so I don't leave in the middle of the show to go hop into the shower for five minutes.

I never get that boring.

Anywhere from two to five minutes. Cold shower, cold water immersion. If you can't go full on into the shower, then dipping your face or getting your face into icy cold water can also do the trick. Okay. You get a huge kind of vasodilatory response in terms of blood flow to the brain when you do that and a really good feeling of alertness. It's cheap or free and an easy way to improve alertness. And it'll stick with you for typically about 45 to 60 minutes. A nice cold thermo exposion. So that's number one or exposure explosion. I don't think exposion is a word. It's kind of a mixture of exposure and explosion. But we don't edit out our little.

Especially amusing, amusing mistakes we like.

So the next thing I would recommend, similar when it comes to increasing blood flow to the brain, would be curcumin. You can get curcumin capsules. You can also keep like a good organic curcumin powdered herb handy, like in the form of turmeric. I'm a bigger fan of using curcumin capsules just because you can get like really concentrated volumes of it, like up to about a thousand milligrams, which has a really, really nice effect. And turmeric or curcumin is excellent at not only boosting the mood, but also shutting down brain fog and alleviating BR inflammation. I am a huge fan of popping a few curcumin capsules, like when I wake up in the morning or in the afternoon, I use the ones called phenocaine. But I would consider using curcumin. Alternatively. You could just have curry every day for lunch, but curcumin can help out quite a bit. Cayenne pepper can have a little bit of a similar effect, but curcumin works even better. So that would be number two for a coffee alternative would be curcumin. Next one would be something that we already hit on a little bit and that would be using this L Theanine. So if you don't like the taste of coffee and you avoid energy drinks, you can still do green tea. You can also do, there's a company that makes edible green tea, which are these like little crunchy, tasty green tea leaves that you can literally just pop and eat like popcorn. Those are pretty good, really dense source of L Theanine. They're going to keep you awake and alert without disrupting your sleep. And of course there are, there are other versions of green tea that you can get whether just like drinking your regular herb green tea during the day. There's this stuff called Delta E that's really, really concentrated sources of L Theanine, that's this little pink packet that you dissolve in water. Kind of a few different ways that you could skin that cat. And I'll put links to all this stuff in the show notes for you. But using L theanine instead of caffeine for the reasons that I kind of alluded to earlier this podcast, that'd be another way that you could stay awake without coffee. So another thing that can work really well is inverted positions to increase blood flow to the head. You don't have to do a full on handstand or headstand. You don't have to rush out and buy an inversion table. But even just sitting with your legs up against the wall elevated for about five minutes can have a really cool stimulation effect to your brain. And when you stand up again, you can find that increased blood flow to your brain can actually really help with alertness and focus and kind of wake you back up again. That or you fall asleep in the inverted position and find out that your boss fired you about two hours later.

And that you can't feel your feet.

When you wake up. I actually will go out and hang on my inversion table and this is total kind of biohacking realm, but I'll go out and do my cold shower and then go hang from the inversion table in my garage for a Few minutes and then go back in and go to work. Work. And that is a pretty potent little one, two combo for improving your. Your focus. You can't necessarily do that if you're a personal trainer at the gym. But for those of you listening in, I mean, you can still, you can still hack that together by splashing your face with cold water and then like getting into the inverted position. So that'll be another way that you can do it. And then the last thing. And this, this is probably going to come as no surprise to people because I tend to kick this horse to death. That would be the use of adaptogen. Adaptogenic herbs. Like the herbs that you can find in something like Tianchi, which is the really potent adaptogenic herb supplement that I take. It's like £40 worth of Chinese medicinal adaptogens all shoved into one tiny packet. And that kind of reminds me of the line from Aladdin when I say that. You know the line from Aladdin. Phenomenal cosmic power. Itty bitty living space. Anyways, that's tng. So that's the. That's the last thing that you could use is those Chinese adaptogenic herbs until you have kids.

Although that movie came out before you had kids.

My kids have never seen it because they only release it like every five years. So I haven't gotten my hands on Aladdin yet. Maybe I'll buy a pirated copy when I'm over in Thailand. Anyways. Yeah, so do cold showers hours. Try curcumin. Try some L theanine like from. From green tea or delta E. You can try inverted positions. You can try tnt. Any and all or a combination of the above. If you try all of them at once, warning, your head might explode. But those are five ways that you can stay awake without coffee. Becca.

I like flicking myself in the forehead right between my eyebrows.

Yes, the Canadian flicking method. That also. Yeah. Hey, Ben. Hey, Brock. This is David calling from Chicago. I've been checking my blood work since January 2013 and I've noticed that my potassium levels have been increasing. My blood draw in January 2013 showed potassium levels at 4.7, so I guess that was okay. But then In May of 2013 it was 5.7. Then I tested again in September of 2013 and had potassium levels of 5.8. Also, I wanted to mention that my CO2 carbon dioxide levels in January, May and September have been steady at 21. All the markers seem to be within optimal range. So in January, the only thing that changed was my diet to more of a paleo Primal diet. So I feel good, I look good, I'm lean, I perform well. So any advice on this, I would appreciate it. Thanks, man. You guys are great. This is really interesting. I've similarly kind of tracked my potassium levels and my electrolyte levels with the wellness FX testing that I do every few months. And that also gives CO2 levels. CO2. If that were like super duper low, that would indicate kind of a diet that's a little bit more acidic and the need to introduce more. More alkalinity, like more dark, leafy greens into the diet. But if you're. If your potassium levels are high and your kidney function is okay and your liver function is okay, technically the term for this is hyperkalemia. So we've all seen the periodic table of the elements. Potassium is the K plus. And so high potassium levels is hyper. K or hyperkalemia. There's a lot of different things that can cause hypokalemia. But the issue with it is that although potassium is really important to maintain the action potential in nerve cells, which means that it's also important for muscle contractions, for not cramping, stuff like that. What can happen is if you get excessive production of potassium, and that can happen through everything from muscle tissue breakdown to taking too much of a potassium supplement, or you get ineffective elimination of potassium. And that's actually usually due to adrenal fatigue or overtraining. What happens is that that increased potassium results in what's called a depolarization of your cells. And that depolarization opens a bunch of sodium channels. Channels, and it results in some pretty big issues from a neuromuscular, cardiac and a gastrointestinal standpoint. Because once these sodium channels are open, it can do things like cause paraventricular contractions in the heart and some issues with heart over contractability, it can cause episodes that would be a bad thing. It can cause episodes of muscle weakness, muscle spasms. It can cause issues with the way that your. What are they called, your peristaltic muscles in your gut, like the way that those actually contract subconsciously and move food through your gut or unconsciously, you know, as part of your nervous system that you can't control, your autonomic nervous system. What happens is potassium can. Or high. High potassium levels can kind of influence all those things. As far as why potassium would be elevated or why you would continue to see potassium go up. Usually in folks, it's either due to a. There being potassium in some kind of supplement that you're using and you not Being aware of it, that would be, number one would just be kind of look at your supplements and make sure if you're taking supplements that you're not getting too much potassium. Number two would be that often when you switch diets and you start eating Paleo, you start eating Primal, you start eating more raw, real foods. Sometimes your mineral intake can go down. And that's because we simply do not have fruits and vegetables from the same soil that they might have been grown in thousands of years ago. We tend to get fruits and vegetables from mineral depleted soil. We tend to get more mineral depletion in our cells. And a big, big part of that is due to the high amount of electromagnetic field that is all around us now with computers and smartphones, et cetera, that essentially increases the leakiness of the cell. And so we actually don't hold on to minerals as well either. So it can be a good idea to supplement with either a trace liquid minerals or like some kind of a sea salt and go out of your way to use that. If you've kind of switched from like a standard, you know, westernized like electrolyte and sodium filled diet to more of a natural mineral based diet, you would think and it would be nice that you wouldn't have to supplement with excessive or extra electrolytes when you switch to a healthier diet. But often that can be the case. Now what happens is when you're getting sodium imbalances or not enough sodium in your diet, basically that potassium level is going to start to go up. It's just a sodium potassium imbalance. So I would consider using like a, like a Himalayan salt or an Aztec and salt or something along those lines. A lot of times also when someone switches diets, they start into more exercise. I know that David says he only exercises once a week. I don't know if he's increased his stress levels or anything along those lines. But whether it's stress from your lifestyle or stress from exercise, the increased cortisol production can cause what's called an aldosterone deficiency. And when that happens, potassium is not excreted the way that it's supposed to be. And so over training or overstress can both cause that increase in potassium as well and for it to start to go up like that. So the two things I would look at would be de stressing, whether it's through yoga, breathing, meditation, journaling, that type of thing. If stress is an issue, I would look into using electrolyte supplementation. And then the last thing you may want to consider is That I actually like to see CO2 levels for alkalinity and acidity balance to be closer to like that 24, 25, 26 range rather than 21. So you may want to start taking in a little bit more veg and some, some raw fruit and not just like a lot of meat. There was a study that just came out this morning actually that I was reading this morning over breakfast talking about how even like a paleo diet or like a high meat diet or a diet that's quote unquote healthy and natural but doesn't include lots of vegetables and fruits, can be a real, real big issue for diabetics especially and for increasing risk of type 2 diabetes because it causes a net acidity load. So I'm a fan of really kind of eating like a, you know, a plant based diet that has lots of fats and then moderate amounts of meats which technically are acidic, you know, especially when unopposed with proper vegetable and healthy fat intake. So. So those are some of the things that I would think about. Hello, my name is Derek and I'm from Grants Pass, Oregon. The question I have is regarding belly digestion problems. I know that when I run for longer durations, over eight hours, my sugar sensitivity increases exponentially and my stomach will just turn. I can feel the acid buildup in the beginning stages of vomiting in the back of my throat. My mouth waters slightly and I'm unable to take in any calories and cannot run at a pace I'm accustomed to. It's more like a drunken waddle at this point. I've altered my race fuel significantly to mitigate this. This eliminating sugars and found feed zone portables with their rice based real food options. And it's worked well along with chewing a map every 20 minutes. But my stomach still soured at mile 72 and was unable to put anything down. First part of the question is is there anything I can do to prevent this from happening? And the second part is if my stomach does turn, is there anything I can take to settle my stomach during the race? Yeah, I think Derek was at the superhuman event, wasn't he?

Yeah, in Spokane last March, the Become.

Superhuman live event, which we may actually end up doing again, but it's on the back burner until I get back from Thailand, at which case we're looking at the possibility of organizing it in either Austin or Seattle. But I'll keep folks in the know about that as we go. It's not going to happen in Spokane though. Apparently Spokane is not a big enough city for folks to flock to.

It was difficult to get there, I have to say. From Toronto to Spokane was not an option.

Yeah, I think we had about 10 times as many people on the live spreecast as we did sitting in the audience anyways though. So yeah, what happens? There's a few things that happen in terms of your ability to ingest sugar or digest sugar or maintain energy the longer and longer that you get into a long run. One would be your actual sugar transporters. So you've got different transporters for different types of sugars in your gut. You've got your sodium dependent glucose co transporters and you also have what are called your GLUT5 transporters. And those sodium dependent glucose transporters primarily transport glucose and help out with glucose absorption in the gut. And then those GLUT5 transporters, those primarily transport fructose in the gut. Now what research has shown is that you get your maximum sugar absorption when you're able to utilize both of those transporters. Which is why most bars or not bars, but gels or sports drinks out there are typically a mix of like glucose and fructose, or fructose and maltodextrin. Maltodextrin or some kind of a blend that's going to allow for using multiple transporters because you can nearly double the amount of sugars that are absorbed in the intestine when you're using multiple transporters. So the issue is that not only do these sodium dependent transporters begin to shut down after long, long periods of time spent gradually depleting especially your water and your hydration, but you also tend to get lower and lower activity as far as your digestive enzyme activity is concerned. So sugars are broken down a little bit more slowly as well. Now granted we're talking about you primarily, it looks like eating simple sugars, but if you're trying out the Feed Zone portables book and doing like, you know, rice cakes and rice chews and the kind of stuff that are, that's in that book a lot of times enzymatic activity can also be an issue as far as this is concerned. And then the final consideration is of course that sugars are really, you know, the longer and longer you go, the least efficient energy source to be relying upon. And I'm not sure that I would be doing much sugar in the first place place. So the thing that I would consider first of all is you may want to actually get one of these film canisters or like a nuun type of bottle and actually take digestive enzymes out there with you. Or use digestive enzymes for a period of time in your life so that you jump start or up regulate your body's own natural production of digestive enzymes, which can actually happen if you use digestive enzymes for a period of time. So I'm a big fan of this digestive enzyme called caprazymes. It's got ginger root in it, it has a yucca whole herb powder in it, it's got aloe vera in it, which is a really nice digestive tonic, which can help you out quite a bit even if you're out running. And what these enzymes do is they function as a catalyst, so they help a metabolic reaction happen faster than it would without the enzyme present. So you're essentially able to digest and assimilate foodstuffs more quickly and put a little bit less enzymatic stress on your body. If you're using something like a digestive enzyme during a long, long day where you're eating fuels and moving at kind of a slow pace and you're having difficulty with absorption or digestion, which doesn't happen to everybody, but in the folks that it does happen to, enzymes can be helpful. That particular digestive enzyme blend I also like because it not only has those, those gut botanicals in it, but it also has a good mix of lipases for fats, proteases for proteins and amylases, and kind of glucose digesting enzymes in it as well. So it'll break down everything from, from sugars to fats to proteins. So I would, I would consider using something like that. I would also. So keep using the amino acid that you're using, but you may want to take more amino acids. And there's a really good reason for that. What happens is a lot of times when we are bonking, we think it's because we have low blood glucose levels, but what it actually is, is it's high tryptophan levels. Now here's why that happens. We're all familiar with like, you know, turkey sleepiness and blaming that on the tryptophan. And really that's more due to the insulin release and the blood flow all going into the stomach than it is to the tryptophan from the turkey. But what happens is during prolonged exercise, branched chain amino acids start to get metabolized by your skeletal muscle, and branched chain amino acids compete with tryptophan for uptake across your blood brain barrier. Now what that means is that as your blood levels of branched chain amino acids go down, the longer and longer that you get into exercise. There's fewer and fewer branched chain amino acids to compete, so to speak, with tryptophan getting transported into your brain. Tryptophan causes sleepiness, it causes fatigue, it causes, like, lower mood, lower sensory perception. So we get all this tryptophan getting into the brain as amino acid levels begin to decline, and that causes that feeling of sleepiness, or kind of like that bonking feeling, the farther and farther you get into an event. That's why one of my strategies during Ironman Hawaii was to take in like twice. It was actually closer to three times as many amino acids as I did during Ironman Canada, just to ensure that I wasn't bonking from this huge tryptophan release from the usage of my entire amino acid pool by the time I got into the run. So this can be a kind of a good strategy as well, is to take in more amino acids and they don't have to be like, all the, like, that master amino pattern stuff is really good, but it's also pretty expensive. So if you're taking like 10 grams an hour, that can add up. Whereas if you're doing 10 grams of branched chain amino acids an hour, you can, you can get a lot of branched chain amino acids to help to mitigate some of that central nervous system fatigue without necessarily going broke and having to eat rice and beans the rest of the year. Because I know master amino pattern, like, you know, it's something you may want to ration depending on your level of income. So you can, you can add in digestive enzymes, you can add in about 10 grams of branched chain amino acids per hour. And then just consider kind of, you know, and this is something that I talked about on other podcasts and articles and stuff, and I'll link to it in the show notes. But consider using, instead of sugars like fats like MCT oil, consider using a really slow release form of sugar like that. You can superstarch. Those two things combine really well with the master amino pattern. And then you can use something like the endurance pack that I designed over at Pacific Elite Fitness, which also throws something called X2 performance into the mix, which helps drive a lot of these amino acids and the glucose bleed that you're getting from the superstarch into your muscles at a faster rate. So when you combine all those together, it's a really, really good kind of 1, 2, 3, 4 combo for going all freaking day long. And you can just mix that stuff and put it in a flask. So those are, those are some of the things That I would do. Derek. Hi, Ben. This is Eric from Colorado. Again, we all know that bitter melon is your favorite supplement for blood sugar control, but I was wondering if you had any thoughts on Glyco Solve. It's the berberine and banaba leaf extract that Jimmy Moore is always talking about. Thanks for your input as always.

Bye now. I hope your answer won't anger our good friend Jimmy Moore.

Our good friend Jimmy Moore. Well, I'll try to be kind to Jimmy here. So there's a lot of different ways that you can control the blood sugar response to a meal or how quickly or how voluminous blood sugar responds to a meal that contains either proteins or carbohydrates. And one of the ways that you can do that is with this compound called berberine, which is the active component of glycosolve. Now, glycosolve also has this stuff called banaba leaf in it. But to my understanding, the levels of banaba leaf, which acts kind of similarly to insulin, as far as, like, lowering blood sugar levels without putting as much of a strain in your pancreas, the levels of banaba leaf in the glycosolve are not quite as high as the levels of the berberine. And there are some issues with berberine. First of all, it works very well for lowering blood sugar levels or lowering the blood glucose response to a meal. But one of the things is that it can damage your liver, specifically in a similar manner to something like drinking too much alcohol or taking in too many pharmaceuticals. It can really put a hit on the liver enzymes. So I would be kind of careful with it from that standpoint. The other thing is that it can inhibit something called DPP4 and raise the levels of a hormone called GLP1. And when you inhibit DPP4, that can turn off part of your immune system, and so it can influence immunity, and it may potentially be carcinogenic from that standpoint. And raising your GLP levels over a long period of. Of time may also lead to a large growth of abnormal cells in the pancreas, which could cause some issues with pancreatic tumors down the road. The other thing is that the. The specific impact on the liver that I was referring to is the antioxidant part of the liver, the liver detox pathway that uses what are called P450 cytochromes. And especially for anyone who's exercising a lot and who doesn't want, want to kind of deplete your levels of natural antioxidants, that your liver is really going to need to fight off free radicals from exercise or from pollution or toxins in your food, things of that nature. You want to be careful with that. So berberine I'm not incredibly impressed with as far as, like, a side effect standpoint. So that's where I'd be careful. I just, I would need to see some, you know, even if it's like some N equals one study of people showing their liver enzymes making sure that like, aspartate aminotransferase and alanine aminotransferase aren't super elevated. I'd want to see what's going on from like, a pancreatic standpoint to make sure that there's not a lot of, like, pancreatic cell damage going on. And that's a, that's a more difficult test to do to look at something like that. And, you know, for me, I haven't seen enough evidence that convinces me that this stuff is entirely safe. You know, I've talked before about using bitter melon extract to decrease blood sugar levels and postprandial levels. That stuff I know is efficacious because I do my own blood sugar measurements after a meal, and I'm well below 135 when I use that stuff. About 30 minutes prior to a meal, I test my liver enzymes and my alanine aminotransferase and aspartate aminotransferase trace is extremely low. And I'm just a. I'm a bigger fan of that stuff in terms of a safety and efficacy standpoint versus the, the glycozole. So I'm going to stand by the stuff that I recommend just based off of the fact that I'm not totally sure about the glycosolve. And I. I will totally stand to be corrected, like, if. If there's information about berberine of which I'm unaware or if I'm. I'm totally barking up the wrong tree here as far as, you know, kind of blowing this out of proportion with the pancreatic issue. I'm all ears. But at this point, I am concerned about some of the stuff that I've seen on berberine. So I personally wouldn't use glycosolve. I'd use the bitter melon extract instead. And that's. That's kind of where I'm coming from as far as this stuff goes.

I don't know if there's a big price difference at all between the two either.

You know, I.

Capsules of the glycosal. It's like $18.

It's 18. Okay. And so I think for like a month's supply of the bitter melon extract, it's closer to 40. So bitter, if you're going to go with like MPX 100 bitter melon extract, it's probably going to be about $10 per month, more expensive. But that 10 bucks saves your pants, saves your pancreas and your liver. There you go. And like, that's how I stay super lean, too. Like, I stay super lean at the drop of a hat. When I start using mpx, it literally keeps me from gaining weight, period. I almost can't gain weight when I eat carbs and I'm taking that stuff at the same time. So it's pretty powerful. Hi there, Ben Brock. It's Greg Juden here from Johannesburg, South Africa. I'm an endurance athlete that trains on average anywhere between eight and 18 hours per week, depending on events that I have coming up. My body weight is relatively low for someone that stands at over 6 foot at 63 kilos. But more concerningly, my body fat percentage is particularly low around 5. And as a result of that, my current focus is to try and increase that fat percentage in a healthy manner without putting on unnecessary weight. What I would be interested to hear from you is your particular opinion on how many calories an athlete such as myself should be taking in, given my personal circumstances and perhaps more importantly, how I should be splitting those between protein, fat and carbs. You get very mixed opinion with all.

The debate that's raging at the moment.

Around high protein, high fat, low carb diets. I'm particularly interested in knowing that for someone trying to increase their body fat percentage without putting on weight, what the best split between calories is per day and how many calories someone should be taking in per day.

Thanks again for a truly fantastic show and keep it up.

Look forward to hearing from you. Cheers. Well, man, you don't, you don't get this question a lot. We don't get a lot of listeners writing in, wanting to be fat or calling.

This is the second time I think we've had somebody say anything about wanting to gain weight. And this is the first time it's all been about fat. Not about necessarily weight, like muscle weight or anything. It's interesting, man.

I, I personally look at, look at babies or small animals when it comes to gaining weight quickly and safely. And, you know, especially when you're talking about the, the percentage of fat, carbs and protein, that's, that's what I look to, is, you know, how do you get a baby animal to get big. And also what, what kind of appears to be the composition of our own tissues when it comes to what the proportion of fats and proteins are in our own body tissues. So if you can, what you're saying.

Here reminds me of a book I read.

Exactly. So there is a book. Yes, there is a book about this called the Perfect Health Diet. And the Perfect Health Diet makes a macronutrient recommendation of 20% carbs, 65% fat and 15% protein. And that is based off of four different principles. Number one is that observations about our ancestors and hunter gatherer diets show that approximate ratio in most folks, that 20% carb, 65% fat, 15% proteins. Granted, there are some populations like the Katavans and some Pacific Islanders and people like that who get 60, 70, 80% carbohydrate, but most of them are handling that diet quite well because of their genetic propensity, increased activity of a lot of the enzymes responsible for digesting and assimilating carbohydrates, probably better insulin sensitivity and pancreatic production of insulin as well. But in most folks, we see that this type of diet, from just an observational standpoint and an ancestral standpoint, works well. But when you dig in, and for me, I'm not a huge fan of observation of ancestors, I like to look at the nitty gritty composition of either tissue or natural food sources like breast milk instead. And when we dig in and look at that stuff, it turns out that the average leaf male has about 30 pounds of fat and about 23 pounds of protein. And if we look at that with as far as the proportion for the other body tissues, it gives us about 60% fat and 20% protein. And the rest would be carbohydrates. So that also kind of shows us a clue when it comes to macronutrient ratio. When you look at human breast milk, it's about 39% carb, 54% fat and 7% protein. Now, the brain of an infant needs slightly more carbohydrate fraction than the brain of an adult, because the brain of an infant needs just slightly more glucose. Even though infants do run really well on ketones, they do have slightly elevated glucose needs compared to an adult, which is why we bring that composition of breast milk down just slightly from the carb standpoint. And then for a growing adult, we would slightly up the fat and slightly up the protein. So ultimately, for healthy weight gain, I would go with about 20% carbs, 65% fat and 15% protein. Now, as far as actual calories go, and this is something that, you know, bodybuilders, personal trainers, you know, people in the, in the fitness industry have known for years, is you can get away. If you're trying to maintain body fat loss levels or you're trying to basically get bigger without getting too fat, you're usually looking at not wanting to exceed your baseline calorie needs by more than 500 to 1,000 calories per day. So what that means is if you go and you find a metabolic rate calculator, there's actually a bunch of good free ones. Over@getfitguy.com I have a bunch of free metabolic calculators, activity calculators, ideal weight calculators, a bunch of stuff over there@getfitguy.com if you go over there and use the calculator and you determine that your basic metabolic rate or your basal metabolic rate is 2,500 calories a day, then as you're trying to gain weight, I wouldn't be exceeding 3,500 calories a day. Just if you're looking for safe and healthy weight gain, that's not going to cause you to balloon and get like really fat or produce a of bunch, bunch of visceral fat and storage fat around your organs that can potentially be damaging from a health standpoint. So I would simply up your daily calorie intake over and above your basic metabolic rate by about 500 to 1,000 calories and then do that 20% carb, 65% fat, 15% protein, and that'll give you a really nice ballpark for, for kind of gaining body fat, but doing it in a healthy way.

And Greg, I, I sort of apologize, but not completely for chopping your question down so much. But, but everybody, this is just a general note. If you're leaving an audio question, try to keep it under a minute. Otherwise know that I'm going to, I'm going to take the knife.

Yeah, that's right. Just don't. Yeah, don't talk so damn much. Calm it down.

Exactly. I don't want to have to cut ya.

Hi, Ben, this is Paul from Boston. In a recent podcast, you mentioned the compact Electrostim unit. How does this compare to the OP wave that you talked about? Earlier in the year, I was not able to run due to a very tight lower calf muscle. But after five treatments with the ARP wave at a local sports clinic, I was able to run. For the last six months, I began to develop the same tight calf muscle and was Wondering if the compacts could treat it or do I need to stick with the ARP wave. Thanks. So, dude, the ARP wave, if you've seen the pictures of me at Dave Asprey's biohacking conference down in San Francisco last year, you had all the electric.

Electrodes stuck to your gut.

To my abs. They. They jacked up the ARP wave on me at 100% intensity for 10 minutes. And I literally felt like doing a thousand crunches. It. Yeah, it felt like I'd done a thousand crunches and then run a mile when I. When I turned that thing off. And it's. It's really crazy. And of course, if I would have done something like that with, say, like the Compex, I would have had skin burns all over my abs just because it's a. It's a different type of crunch current. So this ARP wave or ARP wave is something that Jay Schroeder, when I interviewed him on the podcast, talked about. And Jay was actually at that biohacking conference kind of overseeing the utilization of this thing. But it's an electrostimulation device, but it's really different than any other electrical stimulation device that's out there. So it uses what's called a direct current or a DC current. But the way that that current is delivered is in this super high frequency waveform that gets. It gives you basically a deeper penetration into muscle while reducing your skin impedance and your fat tissue competence. So you don't get. Or impedance, so you don't get skin burning, but you get a way more intense contraction. And it's actually a contraction that's a little bit more of an eccentric or a lengthening contraction rather than just like a shortening or spasming or tightening of the muscle. So it's very good for therapy as well as for strengthening the muscle compared to something like a basic electrostim device. Now, of course, that advantage comes at a cost. At a price. At a price. So you could do a search for ARP wave treatment and then the name of your city, and you could probably find a physical therapist or a chiropractor, and it'd cost you about 40 to 50 bucks a session to go in and, like, get Achilles tendonitis worked on or get an injury worked on, which ARP wave does a really, really good job at working on. You can also, you can buy one outright and it's about 10k or so. Like, if you decide you want to train with Jay Schroeder or Charles over at Evosport and you want to get a year of training with them and monthly webinar that teach you how to use it and everything else. That's about what it comes out to. I think you can get the unit on its own for closer to 8k, but if you have no clue how to use it, you've just basically got this really almost dangerous electro sim unit that's not going to give you much bang for your buck. So I think it's a pretty good deal. Like, I've got no financial relationship with Jay or Charles over at Evosport, but if I was going to go buy one of these things and somebody dropped, dropped a 10k check in my lap and said, you know, go get yourself an ARP wave, I would definitely go straight to them because they're the, you know, they train the NFL football players on how to use it. They use it for rehab really successfully. So, yeah, I mean, it's definitely an efficacious unit, but it's just one of those things where, you know, it is an expense. I use the Compex Sport Elite because I don't really have the budget for a $10,000 Electrostim unit. And my wife would probably, probably kill me if I went out and bought a $10,000 Electrostim unit.

And your kids would never go to college.

My kids would never go to college. And we'd eat bean rice and beans. So you can get good effect in terms of strengthening rehab, kind of shutting down pain a little bit. With the Compex. I'm not going to pretend you're going to get the same type of strengthening and the same type of rehab effect as you can with something like an ARP wave. But, but you've also got that option of seeing if there's one you can hunt down in your area where you can just go in. Typically it's about eight to ten sessions or so with a physical therapist or a chiropractor who's actually using it on you, and you could do that and then just buy a compact Sport Elite for your own personal use. And then you can kind of have the best of both worlds because, I mean, if you think about it, that's how many hours. It's like a good 200 plus hours with the, with the ARP wave before you're justifying the expense of buying one if you just go and, you know, go in for a session here and there. And plus you have the added advantage of the person who's doing it knowing what they're doing. So It's a pretty intense tool to just kind of. Kind of fiddle around with and dink strap onto your forehead. Yeah. Yeah. Unless you're Richard Branson or, you know, somebody who can just throw around pocket change like that. So, got a question about DNA testing. I see an advertisement on television, which I probably shouldn't be watching, in regards to DNA testing. I'm wondering if this is effective by your knowledge. And I'm also wondering if it's worth looking into any further. I haven't heard much about this before, and I haven't really heard of you guys talking about it, but it sounds quite interesting.

Ever since you did that 23 and me. That's the one you did, isn't it?

23Andme, baby. Yep.

Yeah, that's the. I've been wanting to get that done. I'm waiting for their. Didn't they have a. They had a huge sale on, like, Labor Day or something?

They. They run sales all the time. But, but it's. It's 99 bucks now. I mean, it's. It's so. So here's the deal.

That's what the sale price was last time I looked.

Yeah, it was like, when I first started looking into it, like three years ago, I think it was 4.99. It's dropped down as low as 99. I mean, if you keep waiting, it's probably going to just be like, you know, a $2 chip implant that you can put in your wrist that just kind of spits out data 24. 7. But speaking of spitting out data, that's what it is. I mean, it's a saliva DNA test kit. You order a kit from their store, they send you a little tube that you spit in, and then they analyze your DNA within about six weeks and then send you online access to a dashboard that gives you a ton of information. Like, you could spend hours on your dashboard digging into your ancestry and your risk factors and your genetic determinants of everything from like your muscle fiber type to your freaking, like, they've got earwax type on there, everything. So it's not a complete mapping of your personal genome. Like, if you wanted a complete mapping of like, all the 3 billion different base pairs in your body versus the 1 million kind of DNA SNPs that 23andMe offers, it would cost you thousands and thousands of dollars. But ultimately, getting like, a basic salivary DNA test is going to give you really the meat of the information that you want. So you're not going to be able to clone yourself with this data, but you're going to be able to identify DNA markers that are really important. Now the thing that scares away a lot of people is they're like, well, I don't want to know. I don't want to know that I'm guaranteed to get diabetes or, or get cancer, like prostate cancer or something like that. You gotta understand that genes determine only about 20 to 30% of your health outcomes. And the other 70 to 80% is all a result of your environment and your life choices, like the nutrient density and how much sleep that you get and how much stress you're under and how much you exercise. So a DNA test is not gonna predict your future. It's just gonna provide you with some really good information that lets you make the right choices. And that's why I like it. Like, I tested at a higher than normal risk for type 2 diabetes. That's influenced my decision to do things like, you know, I eat the equivalent of one piece of fresh raw fruit like every couple of days and I eat a lower carb diet and I take that bitter melon extract before I eat any foods that, or any meals that contain a significant amount of carbohydrates. I tested at a higher than normal risk for prostate cancer cancer. So I eat fresh tomatoes almost every single day for the lycopene. And I'm also. Really.

Aren't tomatoes fruit?

Technically, you just totally destroyed my raw fruit argument. But I'm talking about like, like, like, you know, papayas, mango stuff. Like I still eat tomatoes and avocados and so, yeah, kind of, kind of painting with a broad brush when I say fruit.

But yeah, sorry about that.

You get one. So thank you, Brock, for totally derailing me. So I was about to go into the importance of, of lifestyle choices. So anyways, never mind.

We can just wrap it up here.

As long as you think you can kind of handle the truth when it comes to genetic testing, that's, that's fine. So what do they say?

Your genes like, your DNA is the, the gun, but your lifestyle is the trigger or.

Yeah, the DNA the dynamite. And your lifestyle is like the match. So, yeah, I mean, what's really cool about it is you can see what your drug response is to certain drugs, whether or not you're going to respond to something like, like you could find out you're a complete non responder to Coumadin, a blood thinner drug, and you just know it'd be a waste of your time. If someone ever put you on Coumadin, you could find, you know, like I found that I'm a fast responder to caffeine. So if I eat caffeine or drink caffeine, I'm pretty much done with it within about two to three hours, and it's out of my system. Some people, it stays with all day, but you find out a lot of really interesting things like that. The other thing that's really cool is you can literally trace your maternal and your paternal lines as they've moved across the globe and kind of see what your ancestry is. And this is something I think I was talking about with Rich Roll when I was on his podcast, was like, you could know if you're just like, mostly Northern European and if maybe like a diet with a, you know, fish, higher fat, you know, that type of thing would agree well with you versus maybe if you come more from, like, this Pacific islands or Australia or South America, where you might be able to handle more citrus fruits and rices and grains and grasses. So it's really cool to be able to take a look at the ancestry and maybe throw some darts, so to speak, at about where you should start from a nutrition standpoint as well. So it's really cool for the people out there who like to biohack, so to speak, and kind of make their nutritional or their supplement decisions or their lifestyle decisions based off quantified data. So, you know what? For 99 bucks, I really don't think that, that you can go wrong with this test. And I think it's just way cool. I got it. Somebody got it for me for Christmas, like, two years ago, I think it was. And, you know, I turned it in and. And it was like, mid January. I got the results and we were supposed to go out skiing. And I logged in to look at my results and, like, the family ended up going skiing without me because I was just, like, sitting in front of my DNA test all day, just, like reading it because it was so cool. So. So, yeah, I think it's worth it. I'll put a link to that 23andMe.com genetic testing in the show notes, if you want to see the test that I did, and that's a $99 one. Well, well worth it, in my opinion.

So just for the coolness factor alone.

The coolness factor. And speaking of the coolness factor, we're going to send out a super cool Ben Greenfield fitness water bottle, brand new Ben Greenfield Fitness beanie, and Ben Greenfield fitness tech shirt. Not the nasty cotton shirts, but the cool. Yeah, we've got beanies now, dude, they rock. I gotta get you one.

I've got the baseball cap. I didn't know there were beanies.

We just got them in. They're sweet. So they're gonna. They're gonna be available pretty soon for, like, purchase@BenGreenfieldFitness.com but Kristen is gonna get one for free. So, Kristen Mack, you left us a review on itunes. And as we do every week, if we see your review on itunes, your positive or negative review, really, as long.

As it's constructively negative, as long as.

We'Re hilarious, we're gonna send you a little care package. So, Kristen, because we care, send your address to ben@bengreenfieldfitness.com and I will personally get your care package out to you. I will kiss it, hug it, lovingly caress it, and then send it out the door. Scarred for life, dude. Yeah. So here's what Kristen has to say. She says, what the. And then it tailors off from there. But she says, is this a good.

Review or is this a better review?

It's a good one. She says, when I first started listening, I had absolutely no idea what Ben and I. Brock, we're talking about most of the time. Ketosis, fat soluble, this or that. Yeah, Kristen, we don't know what we're talking about either. But as I have now become a dedicated listener, I've learned so much about the exercise, nutrition, and general health. Most of what they discuss doesn't affect me directly, but I'm always able to glean a little knowledgeable nugget out of the Q and A. I'm really hoping she's not talking about where we talk about poop. The nugget nuggets. And then she says, thanks, Ben and Brock for a wealth of helpful information. No, no, no, Kristen, thank you. So great review. And we'll send you a care package. Kristen, remember, if you want to review an extra nugget, head over to BenGreenfieldFitness.com 263 and not only can you get the show notes over there, but you can also get a cool gift gift from Brock and I, a special video we shot over@giftfromben.com that's giftfromben.com and we're not done yet. You can also go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com love. Yeah, I did give up a job for QVC. You can go to BenGreenfieldFitness dot com love and I'm making the vanna white hands right now to share the wealth. And. And then finally, you may notice that I completely Disappear off the face of the map. As far as a regular podcast for the next three weeks, that's because I'm gallivanting around Asia. But boy, oh, boy, do I have some cool podcasts coming down the pipeline for you on everything from posture and alignment and why maybe you shouldn't use standing workstations to an explicit episode on how to get fit for sex to episodes with Navy Seal on down the line. So tons of cool stuff coming your way.

I will be holding down the fort while Ben is off in Asia. I'll be churning out the stuff. You won't even notice he's gone. Really?

You won't even notice I'm gone? So there you go. Remember to vote over@podcastawards.com for the get Fit guy. And we're gonna finish today with. Oh, and remember to go. If you're a personal trainer, remember to go to superhumancoach.com and we'll finish today with a special little chat between me and our special mystery guest. And remember, after you listen in, you can go to audiblepodcast.com Ben and grab it for free.

Grab this for free.

Hey, it's Ben Greenfield here, and today I have reason number 53 why you need to go and get the audiobook Fitness Confidential by Vinny Tortorich. But I'm not going to tell this to you. I've got Vinny right here in person to tell you why you got to grab the audiobook even if you've already read Fitness Confidential. Why is that, Vinny? Thanks for having me on, Ben. You know, I come from a family of readers. As a matter of fact, my mom was a librarian for 35 years, and you can only imagine how many books she's read, how many books I've read. My degree is actually in teaching, and. And the one thing they taught us at Tulane is a lot of times when you're reading, you're also assuming. And, you know, whenever audiobooks became a thing or back when I started listening to audiobooks, they were called books on tape. And I found that I would go back and listen to books on tape and now audiobooks, you know, just to hear what I missed while I was reading. And I'm a very thorough reader. As a matter of fact, I just read Fat Chance, and I went back and bought the audiobook just to hear it again while I'm out running and riding my bike. And lo and behold, I learned things by listening to Fat Chance that I didn't hear when I was reading the book because I might have been preoccupied and your mind wanders a bit. So look, if you've read the book and you think you've learned everything you can from the book, you might want to go back and see what you might have missed. That's right. And the other cool thing that I like is like after you, after you read something, it's kind of fun to just hear what the author sounds like. And folks, Vinny reads the book. He is the actual voice in his lulling Vinnie tone that you get to hear for about seven hours worth of content. So I'll put links in the show notes over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com the name of the book is Fitness Confidential. Vinny Tortorich, Hollywood celebrity spills the beans on everything, fitness training, nutrition, diet related as well as a lot of extremely hilarious celebrity stories. So Vinny, thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me. Visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness, nutrition and performance advice. It.